


I'm Yelling Tinder

by Michelleleahhh



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: ... almost, Everlark!Tinder, F/M, Feminist Themes, Feminist!Katniss, First Time, Prom King!Peeta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:14:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelleleahhh/pseuds/Michelleleahhh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta and Katniss are like oil and water, black and white. He’s an asshole athlete, she’s a feminist. Those two don’t match… or that’s what Katniss tells herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Yelling Tinder

“Let’s play Eye Spy.”

“Go fuck yourself, Peeta,” Katniss says not looking at her co-worker. 

He chuckles and takes a disgusting bite of his Chipotle burrito. “Depends, you gonna watch?”

Instead of responding, she rolls her grey eyes and rests her chin on her sweltering and perspiring palm. She keenly stares at the sixth Walgreens isle, counting from the checkout counter all 17 cereal varieties she neatly tucked away on the shelf an hour ago. There hasn’t been one Joe Schmoe in here for two hours, and she would rather watch the birth scene in “Knocked Up” with her great-aunt Jane, who also happens to be a nun, than talk to Peeta Mellark, future prom king, for the rest of her Thursday night. The only noises to fill the steamy spring air are Peeta’s sausage fingers thudding away on his phone. It’s utterly annoying.

And what’s even more annoying is the fact that he keeps smiling over at her, with his stupid blonde eyebrows raised. But she won’t talk, nope. She’s perfectly content with silence. 

So, the silence stretches and is only broken by his forced cough. Then, his smug voice rips through the serene tranquility, “‘Not to pull a scene out of 500 Days of Summer, but this isn’t a love thing. Yes, I said it, I’m a girl who doesn’t want love, and if you have a problem with it, you can go suck a dick.’ Well said, Katniss,” he gloats. “I didn’t take you for a Tinder girl, though.” 

Her head quickly snaps to the right and takes in his ridiculously perfect(ly annoying) Gatsby hair. She wants to inform him that the style went out of fashion last year in August 2013, but she’s too concerned with the fact that his broad, beefy hands holds his stupid iPhone displaying her flawless Tinder profile. Of all the people to find it. He grins, taunting her with his overly priced Made in China, fiberglass phone, a phone that has no case on it. He lives life on the edge, or so he tells her repeatedly when he haphazardly drops it every shift. 

“What the fuck?” She reaches and tries to grab his phone but he moves it farther from her reach. With a click and a lock, any possibility of Katniss evading embarrassment is over. But she won’t give into his tormenting. Nope. She decides the best way to handle this situation is to ignore him. His bating usually only has one intention: to make her temper flare. And Katniss won’t boost his lax-bro, wrestling-douche ego. Because he’s a fucking dickwad. “Whatever, you’re a dick.” 

“I think it’s funny. C’mon,” He goads punching her in the arm and making her feel much more uncomfortable. She just frowns harder at him. Hopefully taking the hint, he puts his hands in the air and shuffles away from her. 

She turns from him. With a scowl welcomed on her harsh, angular face, she rummages through inventory books. Peeta, on the other hand, is thundering away on his iPhone and Katniss silently prays to Gods she doesn’t believe in that a manager will see this and fire his ass. Just to rub it in, she pulls the inventory books from the bottom shelf of the register desk, making it seem like she’s doing something. 

“Eye Spy a future Prom Queen,” he sarcastically states.

“Eye Spy a douche bag,” she mocks in a deep voice, not looking up from the inventory book. 

He chuckles, “I wasn’t talking about you.” When Katniss sneaks a glance at him, she sees he’s pointing to Clove Hepburn, looking all kinds of elegance in her tailored boat-neck dress and apricot scarf. Her picturesque last name is a homage to her celebrity look alike, Audrey. On her left is Delly Cartwright. Both of them smoothly walking to the register. Just what she needs to make her evening shift even more fabulous. 

Clove’s a shoe-in for Prom Queen with her Tiffany pearl necklaces, iconic fashion taste, and exemplary personality. But everyone has flaws, right? And Katniss, while a no one in school soaking up everything feminist from her books and blogs, questions Clove’s individuality; she’s a charade. She depends on what her friends think, on what Delly thinks. Because if Clove is Audrey Hepburn in designer dresses, then Katniss is Katharine Hepburn: fierce and formidable in pant suits. Like floating on air, Clove sweeps forward with her hazelnut hair pulled into a perfect ballerina bun, as Delly leads, puncturing the linoleum floor with her probably new Jimmy Choos. Because that’s what girls like Delly owned right?

But it wasn’t Delly, who Katniss fawned over. Because Delly was loud and happy. Two things that Katniss shied away from. But Clove. Clove was exactly like Katniss, only she was popular, star of the soccer team and ever diplomatic, even though her chocolate brown eyes threw daggers at anyone who outshone her. 

For a second, Katniss wishes she could be her, Clove. Calm and collected and gorgeous. All the things boys wanted, something Katniss wanted too. 

She wanted to be wanted, but it was a foolish desire. For a second Katniss thinks that maybe it’s possible, but she doesn’t want to just be a carbon copy of what MTV thinks is cool. She wants her individuality. And deep down, she wishes there was a blog for that, similar to the Tumblr blog explaining feminist ideals. She wishes someone would explain how to be an individual and be a typical high school senior. To Katniss the two could not coincide. 

Peeta welcomes them with a casual, “Hey Clove, Delly.” 

Clove plops her calorie reduced dark-chocolate bar down at the register. “Peeta.” And is echoed by Delly’s similar gushing greeting. Katniss bites her cheek, fake. They’re both so fake. Just listen to their voice. Fake. 

He makes small talk with them while scanning the Godiva bar. They… they congratulate Peeta on his acceptance to U Penn with a wrestling AND lacrosse scholarship. Oh my Two sports!! He in turn congratulates Clove on Princeton. Fucking Princeton. Taking the chocolate bar from her, staring into Clove’s eyes, he blushes and she has a knowing smile on her face.

Katniss only furrows her head deeper into the inventory book, hoping to remain invisible. Her invisibility cloak, however, appears to be broken, or confiscated by Professor Snape, because Delly twirls to her with an overly sweet voice, “Hi, Katniss. How are you?”

Clove’s empty eyes meet hers, and her sharp eyebrows furrow together, as if trying to remember who Katnis is. 

Katniss, however, knows everything about Clove, thanks to Clove’s endless updates on her various social media accounts. They’ve also been in two classes together this year alone, including Katniss’s favorite Women’s and Gender Studies course. One she never shuts up in, one she knows she outshines Clove in. Katniss’ lip purses and bitterly mutters, “Hi.” 

“Are you excited for graduation?” Delly asks with raised eyebrows.

Katniss’s face remains neutral and only responds with a slight shrug. 

Delly leans her elbows on the counter, “You’re going to Bryn Mawr, right?”

Katniss nods, hoping her silence will be infectious. 

She wonders, with agitation, why Delly cares thinks. Why any of them care. She is a girl who stays to herself. No boys + no friends = no distractions. She doesn’t want distractions, and she doesn’t want Delly Fucking Cartwright talking to her. 

“Well,” Delly starts obviously trying to salvage the conversation, “You should come to my graduation party, Peeta’ll be there. I’ll add you to the Facebook invitation.” Facebook Invitation. Katniss silently mocks the girl, who invites people to things on Facebook. (See why she has no friends.) 

Clove then takes her chocolate, flashing her perfect French manicure. “Bye Peeta,” she chirps, and floats away like the A(sshole) Hepburn she is. Delly giving them both a slight wave goodbye. 

“Clove’s so fucking hot.” That one sentence encases all of the reasons why Katniss hates the guys in her high school. They treat women like objects. Like sex dolls. They’re people. He should know that women are people. “You know we dated,” Peeta informs her. 

She does know they used to date. She also knows that Clove gave Peeta her virginity at some point their junior year, depending on the rumor. Some say it was in the locker room, after Peeta took the title of district wrestler, or something. Some swear it was after Junior Prom. Others whisper it took place in the back of Peeta’s Audi Q7. Katniss doubts all the stories, but they do have one thing in common: The loss of Clove Hepburn’s hymen. Something Katniss still happily had intact.

Katniss’s virginity is an enigma, even to herself. It’s something she praises and something she loathes, caught in between society’s expectations of virginal dresses and overly sexed Victoria Secrets ads. Without her virginity she would no longer be pristine, with it she can’t experience the vamp underground world. But, that’s not why she is a virgin. No. It’s not a statement against love or sex in general. Her reasons are complex. Intricately wound between independence and the lack of male companionship. She’s not going to have sex because John Hughes told her to. She’s not going to not have sex if the perfect situation arose. 

Maybe, it’s because she never had the chance. She never trusted anyone to, and never wanted to with anyone. Not even her long-time childhood friend Gale Hawthorne, who all but threw himself at her last year.

Katniss almost forgets about Clove, her hymen, and Delly’s graduation party. 

But when her phone goes off an hour later, distracting her from her deplorable game of hangman (Who plays the word muffin anyway. Stupid cop-out, Peeta) with Peeta, she’s surprised to learn Delly has invited her to her graduation party on June 21. 

She’s both excited and, reluctantly, upset. Upset because Delly is too proper to go back on idle invitations and, so, Katniss knows that’s the only reason she’s invited. She ignores the excitement that bubbles in her belly at the possibility of going to a party, something she has never done, because she thinks-knows- deep down, no one actually wants her there. Even though some small part of her does want to be accepted, but she knows her feminist part of her, wouldn’t let her. 

Just when Katniss goes to lock her phone, Delly messages her on Facebook. Her phone illuminates, brightly. She shouldn’t read it. Not during work, Katniss has good work ethic, unlike other employees -cough- Peeta -cough-.

Although, she is already playing Hangman with Peeta so she might as well go the extra mile to be a shit worker.

Hey Katniss, I know this is weird. But I really want you to come to my graduation party. It’d be awesome. Seriously, and Peeta’ll be there. You’ll have a friend, you know. I’m not going to take no for an answer, so I’ll see you there. Oh, and it’s a pool party so make sure you bring a bathing suite!

She re-reads it, her mind racing on how to respond. She won’t go. She can’t go. Faced with all the people who judge her, tease her everyday for being a loner. 

Peeta’ll be there? Sweet! So will his friends, like Cato Smith and Thresh Cooke. So will the girls fawning over his purely overrated wrestling talent. Honestly. Truly. Overrated. So fucking overrated. She didn’t know what Madge, her only friend, meant when Katniss should see their outfits. The tight nylon that clung to the wrestling team. She didn’t care. She doesn’t want to see any of them, not even Peeta Mellark. They are not friends, not even close. Peeta and Katniss are like oil and water, black and white, sub-atomically the two repel from one another, never able to integrate calmly. He’s an asshole athlete, she’s a feminist. Those two don’t match. 

Asshole athlete. She thinks he’s too perfect. Katniss glances over at him. His tongue is pressed between his lips, wetting them as he is desperately trying to figure out a word to play that will allow him once to win in their game. He tries too hard. She thinks he might be an idiot. 

But that’s too much to say. If she says that, people will think Katniss cares about things as trivial as high school. She’ll respond later and tell Delly exactly what she thinks of her invitation to spend the night with her co-worker. 

She doesn’t think about him as friends. She doesn’t think about him! Yes, that’s the answer. She doesn’t think of him at all.

__________

 

May slowly slips by, and Katniss realizes she doesn’t want to go to prom. But after her mother’s exaggerated and high-pitched pleas, she goes with Madge. They both wear simple white pleated dress, just to rebel and give a big ‘fuck you’ to America’s standard that girls must be scantly clothed in bright neon colors for prom. She’s also sober, unlike the rest of her graduating class who snuck Dom Perignon and Southern Comfort into their stretched hummer limo. Katniss doesn’t need to be drunk to have fun, thank you very much. She’s her own rebel with a cause.

But when Katniss walks through the doors, she instantly wishes she was drunk, there’s just too many people. It smells like body odors and hairspray, which leaves Katniss gasping for untainted air. It’s as if her lungs can’t seem to decipher oxygen from the chemical haze, pro-nucli. Between the dry-heaving and watery eyes, she sees Peeta… with Clove. They’re taking pictures underneath the flowered archway meant to invoke the Prom’s “Spring Fling” theme. 

So it looks like he went with the fucking hot future prom queen.

It doesn’t bother her when she sees how gorgeous Clove looks, in the perfect halter gold-printed dress. Her hair pulled back into an elaborate bun, while Katniss’ is in simple waves down her back. She should have let her mother do her braids. But no, it doesn’t bother her, because why would she be jealous of Clove Hepburn? Hmm. No reason. None. 

When her eyes shift to Peeta, dressed in his stark black suit, she can’t help but bite back a smile. She can’t help but praise that he looks quite dapper, with his polished blonde hair and slightly crimson cheeks. It makes Katniss a little unnerved at how perfect the two look together intricately wound in each other’s embrace. No one should look so perfect. Especially not Clove Hepburn and Peeta Mellark. 

Katniss doesn’t dance. So she refuses to get up when Madge leaves her to do the Cupid Shuffle. That’s when she sees Peeta finally notice her, his eyes ablaze with instant recognition, but then they’re back to their guarded bright blue. After a quick kiss on her date’s cheek, Clove rolls her eyes as Delly pushes Peeta towards Katniss. He slowly saunters over, with a slight smirk gracing his face.

He plops in the seat next to her and slurs, “Hey Kat.”

Never, in all her life, has anyone ever called her “Kat.”

Her name is not Kat. Not Catpiss. Not Catnip. 

Her name is Katniss. 

With a trademark eye roll she spits, “Peeta.” But he’s too busy to notice her venomous tone. He pulls a large silver flask out of his lapel and takes a large gulp, which, judging from his grimace, must have been delicious. 

When he can talk, he holds the flask out to tempt her. “Want some SoCo?” Katniss is about 

to refuse, but before she can even deny the booze, Peeta thrusts the lid through her parted lips and tilts it up. She can’t stop the burning liquid from falling down her throat. She can’t even mind it. She chugs it. Her lungs appreciating this intrusion, as the burning distracts them from the revolting thick, acidic air. Soon, the liquor is snatched from her lips, but remnants of its taste linger unwelcomingly on Katniss’s tongue. 

“That was revolting.” She hisses at him. “What if a chaperone saw, we could’ve gotten in trouble.” Peeta just wolfishly grins at her. And even though Katniss wants to be mad at Peeta for giving her the toxin, she feels special. 

“You’re welcome,” he quips. Katniss takes a sip of her cherry fruit punch to rid the awful after taste from her mouth. They fall into a silence that is judged by the people around her. Katniss tries to ignore the gazes from her peers, she know’s they’re only scrutinizing why Peeta would be sitting with Katniss. She has to fill the silence, it’s too loud and uncomfortable. 

“Well, looks like you came with the hot prom Queen,” she says, looking over his shoulder at Clove who has floated to another round table socializing, too friendly, with a group of impressionable nerds. 

“Hah, yeah. She’s just trying to make this guy jealous. We’re just friends now.” He awkwardly coughs and notes, “You came with Madge.” 

“Yeah, we’re friends,” she rolls her eyes at him. 

He awkwardly coughs, “So how’s work?”

“Fine. I’m actually done next week, gotta prepare for school.” 

Peeta looks confused, “So early? Do you know what you want to major in?”

“At Bryn Mawr,” she asks. Peeta nods, and swipes a sip from her clear plastic cup. “Do you mind?” Katniss fumes at his antics but continues, “I’m looking to do something with Women’s and Gender Studies.” She tells him, taking her cup from in between them and moves it to the other side of her plate, away from Peeta’s freakishly large arm span. She silently challenges him to try to take another gulp now. Go ahead. Do it, son. 

“I figured.” Katniss’s eyes narrow at him, at his accusation, not at his thumb which just swiped some of the juices from the side of his mouth and now is in between his parted lips. Certainly not at his eyesight that held hers while his tongue lapped at his thumb. “I mean, like. So what’s the deal with feminism?” At Katniss’s furrowed brows he adds, “Like what is feminism?”

“It’s the belief of equal opportunity between the sexes.” She states, like it’s the alphabet, hard wired into her brain from studies, from books, from authors who truly had no authority over her life. 

“So, does that mean, you have to live your life and everything you do for the sake of women? Like is there a creed you have to live by. I mean - can you do something you want to do if it’s not a feminist thing? ‘Cause if you can’t to that’s kinda fucked up.” Peeta looks so confused, like he’s trying to genuinely figure out what’s right and wrong.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, being a man living in a patriarchal and misogynist society.” The truth is Katniss didn’t know, she was dumbfounded. She set an internal memo to check all of her feminist blogs and books for an answer to this puzzling question. She should be better prepared for answers like this.

Peeta just laughs and mutters under his breath, something Katniss doesn’t quite catch, but she’s too flustered at her lapse in feminist knowledge to ask him about it. To hide the flush on her cheeks, she takes a large gulp from her cup. 

When she slams the half-filled cup back down, Peeta steals glances from around the room, and pours the rest of his whiskey into her drink. “No need for thanks, just don’t get too crazy,” he whispers, his breath dangerously close to Katniss’s studded ear, causing a swift drop of her stomach. He then darts out of the seat back to Clove. 

Katniss isn’t going to thank him, because he just left her so confused, so vulnerable to a mind full of unanswered questions. It’s like a heat wave on an asphalt road. She thought she knew what was there, but instead the harder she looks, the more confused she gets. She does, however, take a greedy gulp from the drink, cringing at its awful taste. 

At the end of the night, Katniss drops into her parents’ Beemer, with stinging feet and sweat slipping between her breasts, still reeling from the whisky’s wonderful effects. Her mother prattles on, asking about her night. Katniss tries to answer, but she can’t. All she sees on the drive home is blurred cars and dizzying landscapes. 

__________

Later that night, she lays in bed at 2 am tucked into her comforter, gleefully inspecting different male specimens on Tinder. She’s laughing at their audacity and presumptuous attitudes, when Peeta’s profile appears. Suddenly, that swift rush, similar to the one from when Peeta’s breath brushed against her ear, reemerges. It’s almost like she’s hungry, but not for food. She thumbs through his pictures, one of him in his wrestling uniform. Typical. One of him surfing. Sweet, Brah. Another of him scoring a goal in lacrosse, mask on and everything. Because that’s fucking necessary. And another of him at the beach exposing his chest. While tracing the photo’s border, Katniss reels at his bare and chiseled chest. She sees flicks of blonde hair, and a tattoo on his lower hip. She wants to roll her eyes, but instead she bites her lip. Especially when she sees the blonde hair trailing to below his bottoms. Her deep scrutiny causes a rush of heat to pool somewhere below her stomach. Something she only experienced when reading Anne Rice’s The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and, although she’ll never admit to it… 50 Shades of Grey.

With a shake of her head, Katniss curses herself and realizes she’s been staring at Peeta Asshole Mellark. 

She means to hit no. She does, but she swipes his picture to the right - basically telling him “Yes, I’d fuck you.” She curses. She blames it on the throbbing somewhere below her waste. She blames it on the liquor for clouding her usually nimble fingers. It’s an accident. An embarrassing, stupid mistake that causes her to jolt up in bed and throw her phone on her PB Teen black, white, and green down comforter. Her mind screams at her fingers, mumbling about how Peeta will never let her live this down, ever. Then reality settles in and she realizes he’ll only know about this if he says yes to her, and that is something Peeta would never do. But when she picks up her phone, continents crashing over her, she notices their pictures are combined. 

“It’s a Match!” Tinder exclaims. 

With her mouth agape and mind blank, Katniss opens his Tinder account. Peeta either finds her attractive or it was a joke. A cruel joke, like the time he snickered at her in music class every time Mr. Abernathy called her out on his “feminist bullshit.” 

His profile reads, “If anyone asks, we met at Chipotle.” Katniss smirks at his tag line, because if she knows one thing about Peeta, it’s his obsession with burritos. 

Once again, she thumbs through his pictures, taking in his physique and slightly appraising it. Then that throbbing between her thighs becomes incessant, and just to relieve that pressure she starts rubbing her thighs together. While looking at Peeta’ pictures, her fingers snake their way under her slightly damp underwear. She doesn’t know why she does it. No, she does. The whisky. She swears it’s the whisky coaxing her arousal. 

Discarding her phone to her left, she slowly explores, doing what she’s only read of in her erotica novel. With an empty mind, she tries to chase a climax, but nothing happens. Then, as she’s retracting her fingers thinking it’s impossible to orgasm, her fingers find something. There’s a jolt, a primal lurch of excitement in her stomach. She mumbles a quick “oh,” and presses harder on the spot. While flicking it, she doesn’t mean to. She doesn’t mean to think about Peeta and his thick fingers. She doesn’t mean to imagine his teeth clamped on her ear lobe. She doesn’t mean to imagine his hot breath on the shell of her ear. His hot breath whispering about her wetness and her tightness, about how he can’t wait to taste her. She doesn’t mean to, but she does. And it’s behind closed lids she sees this fantasy. And it’s behind her clamped mouth, she groans at the mercy of Peet-her fingers. 

But her wrist begins to hurt from the awkward angle, and becomes stiff. No matter how she tries, she can’t finish. And as time goes on, she feels nothing new. So she gives up, because she can’t find it on her own.

With a frustrated sigh, her head drops on her pillows, convincing herself she didn’t think of Peeta. Instead she thinks of Betty Friedman, author of The Feminine Mystique, and how she’d be proud of Katniss for trying to explore. But she does fall asleep unfortunately seeing Blonde, quaffed, Gatsby hair. 

__________

She expects the next time she’ll see Peeta he’ll bring up the match. But she realizes, with relief and sadness, that he’s changed shifts. He’s never at Walgreens anymore, nor has he been gone out of his way to torment her in school. When graduation comes, they barely even make-eye contact. Although, that’s probably more on her end then his. Anytime she saw him a heat from embarrassment would overwhelm her. 

So she marches on, never worried about seeing Peeta Mellark or what he thought of the incident. He probably know’s it was a mistake. 

__________

Delly Cartwright’s house is a carbon copy of every mansion on Bridgwater Street, and is nestled on 5 acres of constructed greenery underneath whimsical stars. Katniss only goes to the party after Delly’s constant commands on Facebook Messenger. When she walks in and sees the kegs and gyrating bodies, Katniss immediately regrets her decision. There are people in the pool and teens fist bumping to Pitbull. She suspects Snooki’s hidden somewhere egging this on, with fuzzy slippers on her orange legs. But all alone, Katniss is stranded floating around an unfamiliar house endlessly surrounded in an ocean of people she doesn’t know. In that moment, she decides, with a neatly wrapped gift in hand, she’ll find Delly, give her the present, and exit before anyone notices her. 

But Delly is seriously no where to be seen. She would ask around, but as she walks by her graduating class she can already hear the whispers. Katniss Everdeen. Here? Why? Who invited the feminist-loner freak?

So, she does the only thing she can think of. She looks for Clove, because there’s no way she could get through asking Peeta where Delly is. 

When she finds Clove, the girl is possessively pressing a boy against a brick wall. She thinks it’ll be Peeta, and her stomach drops at the mere thought, but after inching closer she realizes its not him. After agonizing minutes of aggressive kissing, Clove pushes off him with a smirk. Katniss realizes that the boy is one of Peeta’ teammates she’s never had a class with. She also realizes, Clove is in passioned control of the situation.

With a glance of her cyan eyes, Clove notices her awkwardly standing there and waves her over. “Katniss.” Clove enthuses, “I’m so happy you came! Do you know Marvel?” 

Marvel nods in Katniss’s direction, but takes a sip from his red solo cup. 

“Hi, I’m Katniss,” she coldly introduces herself.

Marvel’s eyes lighten, “Ah you’re the Tinder girl Mell-” Clove elbows him in the arm.

“Shut up Marvel.” Clove blurts, causing Katniss’s stomach to drop. She feels like an idiot. 

Putting the words together. She thinks-knows that Peeta showed them. She sees red, violent red. Her imagination runs wild of how they know. How he probably told them during their post-prom night, drunk off his awful CoSo or whatever it was. Told them about how the frigid feminist bitch, who works at Walgreens and is going to the all girl’s Bryn Mawr, finds him attractive. She imagines that he showed them her profile, laughing at her biography. Well, Katniss doesn’t care. She doesn’t care one bit. 

Marvel chokes on his laughter, “Oh this is too good. Don’t worry Peeta has some degrading plans for you,” he says thrusting his hips suggestively. It takes all of Katniss’s power not to slap him in his face or knee him in the balls. Now, Katniss knows why they pushed so hard for her to come. Why they seemed kind of nice. To exploit her, to ridicule her on the last night of her high school career. Fuck you Delly. Fuck you Peeta. And more than anything. Fuck you Clove Hepburn, Audrey would be very disappointed. 

Katniss shoves the package into Clove’s chest, snaps a curt, “Tell Delly thank you,” and leaves. Katniss doesn’t return when Clove calls her. Instead, she continues her way through the back gate, bee-lining on gravel for her old, but well kept, Toyota Camry. But before she can reach it, she is cut off by a hulking, and newly familiar, chest. 

“Where you going?” the voice questions. Katniss looks up and sees that it’s Peeta. 

“Home.” She pushes, causing him to lose his balance and stagger a step back. 

“Sweet. Can you drive me home?” He asks, once his stumbling ceased. 

After a curt, “Absolutely not,” She flies forward, her chest panting from foreign exertion and the humid spring air.

“Come on,” Peeta slurs, easily keeping pace with the brunette. Fucking athletes with their lean legs. She wishes games were never discovered. “I got work in the morning. Don’t do this to me Kat.” Why does he think he can nickname her? 

“My name is Katniss.” 

After fumbling with her brass keys, Katniss, like a routine, tugs open her heavy green door and falls inside. She starts the ignition and feels her car dip next to her, “Get out.”

“I’m drunk and can’t drive.”

“Call a cab.” 

“Think of how the cab could take advantage of me.” 

“Not my problem,” she answers heatedly.

Peeta fumbles with her radio, and when Katniss tries to turn it off, he captures both of her hands. He finally lands on a station and uses her hands as a microphone.

“I fucking love this song.” He sings, “It’s going downnnn, I’m yelling tinderrrrrrr…”

“It’s timber you fucking idiot.” Katniss says over his very out of tune singing.

“Why you gotta bee so ruuuuude?” He grins, baring his blinding white teeth and whispers an octave lower than before, “Take me home, it’ll be worth your while.”

She finally is able to snatch her hands from his firm grip, “You’re fucking disgusting.” 

“You’re such a bitch. Why do I even like you?” He slams his head back and buckles himself into the car. Wait-what. Katniss opens her mouth to defend herself. She most certainly is not a bitch. But instead she’s distracted by his mumble, “It’s your fucking voice.”

She tries defend herself, or that’s what she intends to do, but instead… “My voice?”

Peeta stares at her like a fucking blue eyed, blonde puppy. “You don’t even know!” When he looks at her though, all he probably sees is pure confusion, “Oh, um, On the first day of school in kindergarten. Mr. Trolley asked who knew the valley song, and your hand shot up. And you sang like a fucking angel. Standing on your blue plastic chair, so fucking proud of yourself.” He laughs bitterly, “God it was like an addictive poison. I was hooked. I’d purposefully transfer into any music class you took, just to hear your fucking voice. And you never sang. You’d only give off-handed feminist remarks whenever Abernathy called on you.” He pauses, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“So basically I was an object for you stalk?” She says with her anger growing.

“What? No! See that’s your feminist shit talking. Look you’re gorgeous and you know it. I get it but… Look,” He runs his hands through his pale locks, “I just want to have sex with you. I mean… shit. I didn’t mean that. No. I did. Can I… Do you… want to have sex with me?” Silence fogs the car and clouds Katniss’s usually lucid judgement. Her face is one of pure shock, one of contorted creased eyebrows and a bit lower lip. “I mean, you liked me on tinder… That means something, right?” But it didn’t mean anything, not to Katniss. It was a slip of a thumb print. A swipe to the right instead of the left. A humiliating mistake like the old cigarette burns on her car’s carpeted floors. When she doesn’t respond, Peeta realizes he’s made his own humiliating mistake. “Sorry, I-I’ll just go. It’s just… I really like you Katniss. I’ve always liked you.” 

But Katniss doesn’t hear the last part. She doesn’t hear anything as her mind muses about him and his proposition; she muses about that primal feeling she had between her legs a month before from merely thinking about him. She can’t go with him. She can’t date him. He can’t have her. But she can give herself to him. Yes, that can work. She can have sex with him for one night. That… that would work.

She weighs the up and downs. The negative: losing her dignity. The positive: gaining sexual experience. And although Katniss thinks Peeta has sausage fingers and is excessively egotistical, his physique is otherwise a bit appealing.

So, she imagines she says yes. She imagines her back pressed against his rumpled Egyptian cotton sheets. She imagines his unshaven jaw between her clamped legs; she imagines directing him to the left, directing him to the right. Directing him anywhere to create circular motions against that spot she only recently found on her own. When suddenly, an inhuman, and bit disturbing grunt would crack the slick air. Her moans would only be quieted by his discarded, sweaty black lacrosse penne she would press against her own mouth. He would pick his head up to check on her, only she’d push his head back down to her clitoris, possibly giving him whiplash. 

Although the fantasy flashes very fast, she feels a pooling in between her thighs that she tries to relieve by shifting in her Toyota’s fabric seat. Trying to satiate what she couldn’t manage on her own. She looks and sees Peeta has retreated. And she reluctantly feels upset, but she swears it’s only because this reverie has left her wanting. 

Saying no is appealing too. What would she do if she said no? She’d spend her summer days re-reading The Feminine Mystique. Oh, and she could spend her nights touching herself to the scene in “Blue Valentine,” learning on her own about herself. She could spend her time at Walgreens next to Peeta reeling in her power and his submission. His awkwardness, her ease.

But Katniss doesn’t believe in regret, so if she would say yes it would be on her terms. And if she said no, it would be because she doesn’t want this. 

So when she looks out the window, seeing Peeta slowly drag his feet back to the party with hunched shoulders and biting his nails, she makes her decision. She throws her car back into reverse, finally understanding what Peeta meant at prom. She can be both. She can do both. She can do what she wants and still be a feminist. She pulls up besides him, growing the strength to agree.

“If we do this, we do it on my terms.” Because she won’t be taken advantage of. Because she’ll be like Clove, she’ll be the one gaining the pleasure and calling the shots and taking the reins, in the form of a very fit lacrosse jackass. She’ll be the HBIC. But they won’t have sex. At least not tonight, at least not right now. He wants to have sex? Well, she’ll let him go down on her, but he’ll have to work for the rest. Because she wants to be courted. Because she wants to feel like a damn lady. Even if Betty Friedman disagrees. 

Peeta’s face lights up, and a slow smile graces his decently appealing face. “What?”

“If I say yes… to your… proposition. I call the shots.” Before she even finishes her sentence, Peeta darts around the car, almost faster than sound, and leaps into the passenger side.

“Fine,” he quips, buckling his seat belt, while her hands clutch the steering wheel.

“And this won’t be more than physical. Because I don’t do sappy relationships.”

“Fine.”

“And if you even begin to get attached, because it won’t be me, this is done.”

“Fine.” 

“And we tell no one, I have an athlete-hating reputation to uphold.” 

“Fine.”

“Fine.” Then she adds an afterthought, “And you better not suck.”

Then he contorts his torso over the center console, casually dropping his thumb to the inside of her thigh, dangerously close to where she really wants it. He rubs leisurely circles that causes a shiver down Katniss’s spine. He leans close to her and whispers, huskily, “Oh I will make sure to suck,” he takes a pause. “So, your house or mine?”

Katniss shyly smiles, thinking back to her recent fantasy. “Yours.” She’s always wanted to know what Egyptian Cotton felt like. 

__________

“… and finally, this is my room,” Peeta says as he opens his wooden door to reveal plain white walls and… superman bed sheets? 

“This can’t be real.” Katniss laughs at him, plopping down on his not Egyptian, but coarse cotton sheets. 

“I guess it’s not exactly a bachelor pad.” 

Katniss smirks at him, “Not exactly.” She runs her hands along the sheets, palming the fabric wondering how many girls have sat like this before him. How many blondes, brunettes, redheads. What number was she. Is there a bed post somewhere? Notches on it? A quick glance around told her there was no such thing. But it kept eating her, how many before her. She scowls at the thought. But that’s too personal to ask. This is a one time thing. She promised herself, no attachments, no emotions. Easy as pie. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. “I could get good money for telling people about your superhero sheets. Maybe I’ll sell them.” 

Peeta chuckles slightly, “Ebay or Amazon?” He runs his hands through his hair and looks around the room, anywhere but at her. 

“Amazon for sure. They charge less for shipping,” she jokes. There’s an overwhelming silence, as Peeta runs his hands through his hair. He looks at the room staring at something in the crown molding, that appears to be much more interesting then her. He lets a deep breath out, before finally meeting her gaze, blushing under her piercing scrutiny. “So, uh, how should we do this?” Katniss asks, swinging her legs, from where they dangle off the edge of his bed. 

Peeta sits next to her and turns towards her. He stares at her, closer, inching slightly, until her falls back onto the bed. He stares up at her, whimsically, straining his eyes to meet hers. She guesses that he wants her over him, shielding him. 

She could do this. She could be in charge. She could be sexy and in control. So she leans over him, her hands on either side of his face, her legs straddling his. She ignores the slight flutter in her stomach as their groins touch. Ignores his subtle thrust, unhinged mouth, and labored breath. 

She means to meet his mouth smoothly, sexily, like something out of a Nicholas Spark’s novel. Their mouths melt and fireworks explode somewhere behind them. But instead she falls on his mouth, her teeth bumping his, their foreheads crashing together in a slammed force. 

She pulls back violently. “Ow!” 

Peeta just laughs, and pulls himself up to a sitting position, his hand on her back to keep her in place as he moves. He stares at her silver eyes, locking her in a trance. He runs his hands through her hair. “You’re so beautiful, you know?” He whispers, running his hands down her shoulders. 

She scowls at him, and pulls back. “Don’t say shit like that, you’re ruining the moment.” 

“I’m serious. You have no idea how long I’ve imagined you here, on this bed, on top of me. Granted, in my fantasy you didn’t slam into my forehead. But, I guess we can’t all have what we want, huh?” He shifts slightly, causing a delicious friction in her jeans. She rocks back chasing the feeling, whimpering lowly when she feels it. 

She doesn’t want to hear him. She doesn’t want to know about his precious dreams, fantasies. She just wants this, right now. So she does it, unceremoniously. She leans in, her mouth ghosting slightly over his, her breath spreading warmth over his lips, his nostrils flaring and her eyes flutter close. But he beats her to it, drawing her in, his mouth capturing hers in a heated kiss. He tugs on her bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, worrying her skin between his teeth. 

It feels wonderful, leaving her breathless. His lips are soft, moving over hers like white fog settling over a dark street. Light, present, achingly soft. His tongue runs over hers, as if asking hesitatingly for entrance. So she opens her mouth, unsure of what to do. 

She doesn’t think about how this is her first real, heated kiss. Not a stolen one behind the jungle gym at the Central Prep School. Not one of puckered lips and tight jaws. 

No, this is a kiss of passion. And when his tongue enters her mouth, lightly padding over her tongue, resurrecting it from it’s limp state. She moans into his mouth, his heat and taste of cinnamon overwhelming her. Goosebumps grace her dark skin. He tightens his grip on her back pulling her closer to him, their chests wedged together. It feels like a huddling perfection. As she shifts forward, trying to burrow even closer, she feels him. Hard against her inner thigh. She rocks back on him, experimenting. He gasps, into her lips, shifting slightly as if trying to find relief. She wants it too. The relief, the bliss. The paramount climax, she wants it. So she keeps moving back and forth, his jeans rubbing against hers. 

Her hands find his Gatsby hair, treading through it, dismantling its sun-kissed perfection. And as his palm runs soothing patterns on her back, the other makes its way to her jaw. His thumb pads over her neck, treading lightly. 

Then, all too soon, his mouth separates from hers, hers trying to follow his as if missing him the second he departed. His lips trace her jaw line until he finds a spot behind her ear that makes her stomach drop. It all feels so good. So so good. She keeps rubbing against him, harder and faster, creating friction where she wants it. A moan makes its way out of her mouth, cracking into the slick air. 

Peeta pulls away and lets out a stuttering breath, their chests heaving in perfect unison. While his blue eyes stare intently over her, he tucks a stray hair behind her ear. 

“I’m not going to have sex with you.” He calmly states, bearing into her eyes, tightening his grip on her as if thinking she’d run away. 

“What?” She blurts. She tries to move off of him. She feels so raw in front of him. 

“You’re worth more than that. We’re worth more than that.”

Katniss shakes her head and laughs darkly. “Sorry there is no we. It’s you and I. Not we. We aren’t a thing, this isn’t a thing. I can’t do a thing.” 

“Let me take you ou-”

“No.” She cuts him off, pushing on his chest. “I have to go.”

“Think about it,” he pleads, letting her go and following her to his door. “Please I really…” the rest of his sentence is muffled by the cut of the door. She treads through his labyrinth house, leaving its eerily quiet floor beds and plundering down the stairs. She stops suddenly, realizing his families missing. No brothers, no parents. They were alone. Them. Her and him. Were they even a they?

She would think about it, if they weren’t so opposite, so black and white. If he didn’t plan to hurt her, like she knows he will. And she can’t be hurt. Not again, not like when her father left her and her mother, leaving Katniss to fend for her family. Only to have him come back and claim them. She’d never be the same. Always skeptical, always hurt and remembering that pain. 

That’s what it was all about wasn’t it? The books, the stories, the Friedman and the blogs. It was a fear of being hurt, trusting others like she had trusted before. And trust was a fickle friend who turned his back without a second glance. 

But truthfully, she doesn’t need to think about it to know the answer, she already knows it. She’s known it the second he posed that thought to her at prom. 

She could have both. She could trust and she could be skeptical. She could date an athlete and be a feminist. She could be complex.

But first, she turns around and walks back up the stairs. First, she’s going to give him her virginity, she's still unsure about a future with him. 

Sorry, not sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of an abrupt ending... due to time constraints. Apologies to all.


End file.
